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The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God, by John R. Powers
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All religions have worked hard to give you the impression that I’m a stiff; the kind of guy you’d never invite to a party. . . . I like laughter and the people who do it; from the twitterers to the chucklers to those whose laughter roars out in a gallop of explosions. To me, laughter is taking a bite out of life and saying, “Just right.”
Signed: God Clever yet cynical Tim Conroy, a failed idealist with a chip on his shoulder, is unable to find a secure place for himself in 1960s South Side Chicago. He narrates his bittersweet struggles with God, sex, career, and education in a voice that evokes an Irish Catholic Holden Caulfield. This poignant, skillfully told tale concludes John R. Powers’s memorable coming-of-age trilogy that includes The Last Catholic in America and Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?
- Sales Rank: #926377 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Contemporary Books, Inc.
- Published on: 1977-09-01
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 330 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From the Back Cover
All religions have worked hard to give you the impression that I’m a stiff; the kind of guy you’d never invite to a party. . . . I like laughter and the people who do it; from the twitterers to the chucklers to those whose laughter roars out in a gallop of explosions. To me, laughter is taking a bite out of life and saying, “Just right.”
Signed: God
Clever yet cynical Tim Conroy, a failed idealist with a chip on his shoulder, is unable to find a secure place for himself in 1960s South Side Chicago. He narrates his bittersweet struggles with God, sex, career, and education in a voice that evokes an Irish Catholic Holden Caulfield. This poignant, skillfully told tale concludes John R. Powers’s memorable coming-of-age trilogy that includes The Last Catholic in America and Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?
About the Author
John R. Powers was born in 1945 on the South Side of Chicago. He earned a BA in sociology from Loyola University Chicago and an MA and a PhD in communications from Northwestern University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Studs Terkel, a Chicago radio personality and writer known for his oral histories (Hard Times, The Good War). Powers was a professor of speech and performing arts at Northeastern Illinois University for six years. He also created and hosted a number of specials for Chicago public television during this time. Powers’s stories first appeared in the form of articles written for Chicago magazine. The novels followed in quick succession: The Last Catholic in America, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?, and The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God. He has written one other novel, The Junk-Drawer Corner-Store Front-Porch Blues, as well as Odditude: Finding the Passion for Who You Are and What You Do. He and his wife, JaNelle, have two daughters, Jacey and Joy. He lives in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and is a motivational speaker.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Gregory F. Augustine Pierce Three things happened to young Catholic males in the 1960s. First, “our” president was shot while we were sitting in English class with Fr. Hoctor. Second, the Second Vatican Council changed the unchangeable, that is, the church. Third, Lyndon Johnson, and then Richard Nixon, wanted to send us to Vietnam to kill or be killed. (Plus we never did make it to the major leagues as professional baseball players.)What we lost was our innocence, and we never got it back. What we didn’t lose was our sense of humor. In fact, it was honed on our disillusionment.
John R. Powers captured those years in The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God (1977), a novel that will surprise those who come looking for The Last Catholic in America (1973) or Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? (1975)—Powers’s earlier and more famous books, made even more so when they became the basis for a Broadway musical. Unoriginal Sinner is darker, yet it still makes us laugh. Tim Conroy, the main character and narrator, is closer in spirit to Salinger’s Holden Caulfield than he is to Powers’s Eddie Ryan, star of his previous two books—despite the fact that Conroy prowled the same Chicago neighborhoods that Ryan inhabited.
The Catholicism of Unoriginal Sinner is not so much nostalgic as it is deep background. Tim Conroy got the message that the church he grew up in was gone forever; he just never got up to speed on the church that replaced it. He never goes to Mass, much less confession. There are no overbearing priests or nuns in his life anymore. Family is irrelevant to the story—he doesn’t have an alcoholic father or long-suffering mother, and his siblings never make an appearance.
Of course, you could take the boy out of Church back then, but you couldn’t take the Church out of the boy. Conroy is fascinated by the “big” questions: Does God exist, and if so what is he like and does he accept collect calls? Conroy says: “I hope there’s a God. If there was an election tomorrow on whether there should be a God, I’d vote yes. Living forever sounds like a good deal. But just because I want there to be a God doesn’t mean there is one. Very few people, if they’re honest with themselves, really believe there’s a God the way, for instance, they believe there’s another side of the world. Very few people.”
This novel is about isolated young men who are trying to figure out what the point of life might be—if there is a point to it at all. Turning a jaundiced eye to this world, however, did not prevent Powers from nailing it—especially the young adult male part. Draft dodging; trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to get laid; refusing to take studies or career seriously; showering contempt on politicians, businesspeople, educators, and adults in general—these were the daily rituals of Catholic guys who went to college in the late sixties.
He encounters an auto mechanic named only Caepan who becomes his own personal theologian, answering questions Conroy puts to God. This literary invention alone makes this book worth reading, because for perhaps the first time in history God has a South Side Chicago sense of humor.
For example:Conroy:
First of all, just because someone works for me, you shouldn’t believe everything they say. I’ve never been that fussy about who I hire.
Now contrary to what some of these people might have said, I find being God a lot of fun. I’m very rich, you know. I own everything. I enjoy being alive and so I always have been.
I like to create things: mountains, forests, oceans, people.
People are the toughest things of all to create. They’re so minute and delicate. Just the wrong touch of this or that and you can ruin one of them.
Having people around makes me feel good. Mountains, forests, oceans, and animals don’t tell me how important I am. Well, they do, but not in as nice a way as people. Let’s face it, you can’t have a good time at a party when you’re the only one there. I need you.
Signed: GodOr again:Conroy:
All religions have worked hard to give you the impression that I’m a stiff; the kind of guy you’d never invite to a party.
Walk into a church with a friend and you find yourself using a tone of voice that you use only at a funeral home in front of an open casket. I could never understand why human silence is a sign of respect while the sound of a human voice, saying the usual things, is supposedly a sign of disrespect. And the most disrespectful thing that a person can do in a house of God, according to those who think they own them, is to laugh.
I like laughter and the people who do it; from the twitterers to the chucklers to those whose laughter roars out in a gallop of explosions. To me, laughter is taking a bite out of life and saying, “Just right.”
Signed: GodUnoriginal Sinner is full of late-sixties Chicago characters: Weatherly, the professional student who is constantly scheming about avoiding the draft; Leonard, the only son of Jewish grocers, who was programmed from childhood to go to medical school; Carol (“why buy the cow when the milk is free”) Foltz; Charlie Day, the best freight-car painter in history. And above all, there is Sarah Faber, the perfect Catholic girl that Conroy cannot bring himself to marry.
In fact, Conroy cannot commit himself to much of anything. It is almost as if his cynicism is more important to him than life itself. As long as he can crack a joke or put someone else down, he doesn’t have to face the fact that he has thrown out the baby with the bathwater. His friend Leonard tells him, “You know, Tim, I don’t think most people need a reason to get up in the morning. They get up out of force of habit. They get up because the alternative, being dead, isn’t too thrilling either. But I need a reason. Living just because I happen to be alive isn’t enough for me. I know that’s dumb, but that’s the way it is.”
Conroy has no mission that is worthy of his life. Perhaps that is what we Catholic, American males lost in the late
sixties. “You don’t know what you want out of life,” Sarah tells Tim. “You’ve told me that many times. . . . I’m not blaming you. That’s just the way it is.” Some of us eventually found our way; some of us did not.
Early in the book, Caepan says, “Everything important is left to luck, good or bad.”
“I disagree,” Conroy replies. “Each one of us determines our lives. Luck has very little to do with it.” The curious ending to this novel seems to imply that Caepan was right, but in fact Conroy was correct. He simply did not follow the Catholic training he had received to its logical conclusion: everyone has a vocation, but you have to act on it or it disappears.
I have three teenagers who are just about ready to head off to college themselves. I will bribe them to read John Powers’s book, not because they will recognize the church or recall the times he describes, but because they need to see what happens if young people do not discover a mission worthy of their lives.
Besides, they need the money.
Tim Conroy would understand and approve. Gregory F. Augustine Pierce is the author of Spirituality at Work: 10 Ways to Balance Your Life on the Job and the editor of Christmas Presence: Twelve Gifts That Were More Than They Seemed. He is the president and copublisher of ACTA Publications and a past president of the National Center for the Laity. Pierce is married with three young adult children. He and his family are members of St. Mary of the Woods Catholic Church in Chicago.
The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream GodTime is like a handful of sand. The tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers. But if you caress it, as a mother does a child in her arms, it will leave in its wake memories of its gentle flow rather than the roughness of its stones.Acknowledgments
Just call me Hardrock. Randy. Mary, Margo Powers for that night at the roller rink. John F. and June R. Powers. Gay and Dr. Joseph V. Gioioso for their contributions. Joey, Randy Marie, Danielle. Dr. Martin J. Maloney of Northwestern University and Bill Wright for both their professional and personal assistance. Dan Bardy, Mary Gutekanst, Blair Kaplan and Fran Kotre for their interest and help in my work.One
Alone.
Sitting in parlor number three of Collier’s Funeral Home. Remembering the first time I was in this room.
Thirteen years old. My parents and all of us older kids in the family were attending my Great Uncle Elmer’s funeral. He wasn’t great. My mother, whose uncle he really was, didn’t like him. The rest of my family barely knew him. No matter. There is a magnetic force between the Irish and open coffins.
I had only a flashing memory of the man from when I was three or four years old. Hats and coats already on, my parents were standing at Uncle Elmer’s door saying their good-byes. My Uncle Elmer picked me up and began playfully tossing me high into the air. Each time, as I hung momentarily suspended just before the downfall, I scanned my choices: going higher and smashing into the ceiling or falling back down to Uncle Elmer’s bad breath and dirty hands. Discovering at an early age that gravity makes all the important decisions.
As they were getting ready to close Uncle Elmer’s casket, the funeral director stood beside it and gestured toward the hallway as he talked. “Will everyone please come up ...
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By surfwood4
Humorous and insightful!
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
One Book You've Got To Read
By Sherilyn Herkey
I just received a hardcopy of the original book from a used bookseller...Over the years I've read and reread this book and purchased every copy that I've happened to come across. I usually end up giving my copies away to others. This is the coming of age story of a young boy named Conroy and his discovery of what life really is, and what life really means or should mean. Conroy questions his Catholic teachers and nuns (and no, you don't have to be Catholic to understand or even be interested in his story). Luckily, along the way Conroy finds someone who really understands what life is all about. It's through Conroy's life and his relationship with "Caepan" through which we laugh, think, and cry. This book gets to me every time. If you ever own only one book, trust me, this is the book.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
If I could give this book 10 stars, I would!
By J. Andriso
It's about time that this novel has been reprinted. I bought this book about 25 years ago. In that time, I've read it about 15 times. I cry every time I get to the last chapter. Do yourself a favor. When you buy this book, and you will, buy all of the others in the series. You can't go wrong.
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